The fulacht fia at Rich Hill, on low-lying, poorly drained rough pasture bounded by the old N7 to the west and a housing estate to the south, had left no mark on Ordnance Survey historic mapping and might easily have passed unnoticed. A fulacht fia, to borrow the Irish term now standard in archaeological usage, is a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and charcoal built up beside a water trough dug into the ground. Stones were heated in a fire, dropped into the trough to bring water to the boil, and the shattered, spent stones gradually accumulated into the characteristic mound.

In 2006, the archaeological consultancy Aegis carried out test trenching at Rich Hill ahead of the road scheme, working under Ministerial Direction Number A026. That process identified two separate fulacht fia features across the site. The one in Area B, excavated the same year by Áine Richardson as part of the Rich Hill 1 project, proved particularly revealing. Its burnt mound was irregular in shape, measuring roughly 9.5 metres on its longest axis and between 0.2 and 0.5 metres in depth, and it had been noticeably damaged by ploughing, giving it a patchy appearance. Associated with the mound were four pits, at least one of which is interpreted as the original water trough. A sample of alder charcoal drawn from a secure context within one of the pits was radiocarbon dated to between 2836 and 2493 cal BC, placing activity at the site firmly in the Late Neolithic period. A polished stone axe head recovered from topsoil across the same area was assessed by a specialist and found to suggest the possibility of still earlier, Mesolithic, human presence in the vicinity.

The site is not accessible as a visitor destination; it was fully excavated and the ground subsequently built over as part of the ring-road development. What remains is the record, published by Richardson in 2009, and the material recovered during the dig. For anyone interested in following up, the excavation report is the primary resource, and the radiocarbon date, laboratory reference UBA-12327, is traceable through standard archaeological databases. The Rich Hill fulacht fia is the kind of site whose significance lies entirely in what was learnt before it disappeared, a brief window into activity on this patch of Limerick ground some four and a half thousand years ago.